Well, not quite fallen, not yet. But Sununu himself dropped the next shoe, getting caught at the weekend in a false account of who had paid for one of his political trips on a corporate jet. NEWSWEEK learned that George Bush was furious when he was told about it. Sununu was slapped with new and humiliating curbs on his travels. But top Bush advisers who had chafed under his reign were now in open rebellion, urging that he be fired. Top sources predicted that it was only a question of time before the chief of staff was gone; the White House debate now was what could be done with him, and who would get his job.
As Sununu’s enemies told it, the latest episode amounted to a cover-up: to hide an inconsequential breach of Gray’s rules for using corporate jets, sources told NEWSWEEK, Sununu’s office sent in a conflict-of-interest form that named the wrong provider of his flight. Gray accepted the form and approved the trip. When reporters’ tips prompted Gray to look into it more closely, Sununu said he had misunderstood who was paying for the trip. On top of that, Gray was misinformed about the donor Sununu had identified. When Gray found that out, says a senior administration official, he exploded: “What am I supposed to do, launch a f—ing grand jury over each trip? I thought I could trust the information I was given. This is the chief of staff, after all, not the Mafia.”
What George Bush said when he was told about the episode remains veiled in official discretion. The immediate upshot was an inquiry by Gray and a new set of rules for Sununu, further tightening his use of corporate aircraft and adding a layer of official approval for each flight. For the longer run, staffers said Bush was still weighing his options, hoping that if Sununu’s ouster was inevitable, it could be delayed until the furor quieted. Sununu’s credibility with his colleagues was in shreds; even if Bush chose to keep him, his power was also shredded and his usefulness in doubt.
The incident began with an invitation to Sununu to address a fund-raiser in Chicago on June 11, sponsored by the Republican Governors Association. Curbed in his use of Air Force executive jets for such trips, Sununu could fly commercial or use corporate planes whose owners treat the cost as a political contribution. Three companies were suggested, but Gray rejected each of them as posing a potential conflict of interest. With the speech only a day away, White House sources said, Sununu asked an old friend and major GOP supporter, Washington developer Stuart Bernstein, if he could lend a plane. Bernstein no longer owned one, the sources said, but arranged to charter a jet for about $3,000 from three of his business associates Washington businessmen Howard and Morton Bender and John Mason.
If Sununu had named Bernstein as his benefactor, sources said, there would probably have been no conflict issue. But Gray had advised Sununu not to ask such favors directly. Senior officials believe that Sununu feared that Gray would recognize Bernstein as his friend and suspect the solicitation; thus, on the form, the Bender brothers and Mason were identified as the sponsors. But Gray did recognize Howard Bender’s name, and sensed a problem: Bender’s company has extensive government contracts, and he is a director of the defunct Madison National Bank, whose collapse triggered several federal investigations. As Gray told associates, he asked Sununu’s office about Bender, and was told that this was a different Howard Bender, a Chicago businessman. Sununu’s story is that his scheduler, Jackie Kennedy, “mistakenly assumed” that Bender lived in Chicago, and when Gray called to ask whether Bender was from Washington, she said no. Sununu and his deputy, Edward Rogers, say they never saw the form she sent to Gray.
In any case, Sununu flew to Chicago with his wife, Rogers and Bernstein. When reporters from The Washington Post started asking about the details, Gray uncovered the facts and told Bush, who was said to be “ballistic.” Gray tried to thrash out the discrepancies in the story with Sununu and Rogers. But the sides remained deadlocked, and senior administration officials believe that Sununu had deliberately lied. At the weekend Sununu and Rogers had no high-level allies left.
Even before last week’s fresh embarrassments, Bush was under rising pressure from close friends and top aides to get rid of Sununu. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and campaign strategist Robert Teeter had been in that camp for some time, and the president took care not to discuss Sununu with them. But on a golf outing with Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner, Bush remarked on all the stories about Sununu’s enemies, and asked point-blank: “Is he really this bad?” It was all true, Skinner told him, and Bush said in dismay: “I’ve been dismissing this stuff for a long time.” Later he talked with Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, who told Bush that Sununu was seriously damaging him.
Within the administration, many officials had judged that after the mini-scandal over Sununu’s overuse of Air Force planes, he was on such a short leash that any further improprieties would be his undoing. Then NEWSWEEK reported last week that Sununu had used a White House limousine on a five-hour drive to New York to buy $5,000 worth of rare stamps at an auction at Christie’s. Sununu defended himself pompously on TV, arguing that he had to take the limo to stay in constant touch with his office over secure phone lines. Bush was said to be privately dismayed and angry; White House sources said he griped about the latest story by phone with Secretary of State James Baker.
Then the Los Angeles Times reported that Sununu was borrowing corporate jets. It was legal, but seemed tacky: should the White House owe favors to lobbyists? The New York Post headlined that story SUNUNU: BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A JET? Even then, Bush stubbornly backed his chief of staff, conceding only that “there’s an appearance problem.” Sununu had acted properly, Bush told reporters, and was “doing a first-class job”; the media were simply “piling on.”
But this was the same Bush who had told his staff to avoid even the perception of any conflict of interest. “Believe me, he doesn’t like this kind of crap,” said an old Bush crony, “and he doesn’t enjoy being embarrassed.” It was clear enough that Sununu had been gigged again and all but ordered to stay in town for a while. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater drew laughs when he said dryly, “Car trips - I doubt if he’ll make many more of those.”
Could Sununu survive? “One more anything, and he’s done,” said a senior Bush aide. Some of Sununu’s victims could hardly wait. When a NEWSWEEK reporter called another administration official, he said: “Please tell me you have more. We have to do him in.” In large part, that glee reflected simple enmity at “King John,” who was seen as increasingly devious even with friends. Just last week he told three senior officials three separate reasons for arranging a lunch for Bush and John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. His motive, as top Bush aides saw it: he wanted to keep Brady out of a discussion on the banking bill. In the end, some advisers warned, Sununu was damaging the whole administration. “We have to force the president’s hand,” a Bush loyalist fretted. “Sununu cannot stay.”
Bush had his own reasons for defending Sununu. For one thing, he prizes loyalty and resists firing any devoted underling, especially under pressure. For another, he believes he owes Sununu his own election: after Bush ran third in the Iowa caucuses and his candidacy seemed dead-ended, the former New Hampshire governor delivered his state’s vote for Bush. And in the White House, Sununu has been Bush’s tough cop, keeping discipline, saying no and delivering the bad news while Bush displayed his kinder, gentler side. For all his abrasive bullying, even enemies grudgingly concede that Sununu keeps the trains running on time: the White House is a tight and efficient operation.
But Bush’s zest for the defense was obviously waning. The president “is definitely not a happy camper,” said one of his aides, and Bush’s body language as he praised Sununu evoked a kid who had been force-fed broccoli. Barbara Bush, who has championed Sununu, was “noticeably silent” last week, as one of her friends volunteered. For reasons that aren’t clear, the president has also taken a dislike to Sununu’s man Rogers, an aide to the late Lee Atwater in the 1988 campaign, ordering that he be forced out. Sununu has been dragging his feet on that, but Bush recently set a final deadline: Rogers must be out by the end of June.
Sununu wasn’t returning reporters’ phone calls. But in a bid to mend his image, he issued a conciliatory statement at the weekend, conceding the “appearance of impropriety” and expressing regret for “my own mistakes.” But he seemed likely to cling to office only if Bush’s top aides urge his firing so hard that Bush turns stubborn. For now, Bush is said to be hoping to delay Sununu’s departure, giving him as big a fig leaf as possible. But what new job could be found for him? He has made so many enemies in Congress that it might be futile to try any post requiring confirmation. There has been talk that Sununu might swap jobs with Clayton Yeutter, head of the Republican National Committee. But Teeter Mosbacher and Bush’s friend Frederic Malek, the troika expected to run the ‘92 campaign, have made it clear they don’t want Sununu calling any shots.
The next question was who might succeed Sununu. Skinner, Malek, Teeter and Craig Fuller, Bush’s vice presidential chief of staff, were all in the running; so was Kenneth Duberstein, who served briefly as Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. But the succession, too, was a secret known only to George Bush and his closest confidants. Behind the scenes, his aides said, the president was oddly silent all last week, saying almost nothing even in private about the Sununu follies. It’s never easy to fire a chief of staff, but that time seems to come for most modern presidents. By all the evidence, it has come for George Bush.
John Sununu had problems other than politics last week. NEWSWEEK learned that he has consulted tax lawyers about a potentially whopping bill from the IRS on the “imputed income” he might have to declare for using government planes on personal business. Reporters also continued their scrutiny of his finances. Sununu is not wealthy and his financial disclosures portray him as struggling to meet expenses.
John and Nancy Sununu own a house in Salem, N.H.; another home, with a mortgage of $420,000, in Oakton, Va., and a condo at a Vermont ski resort. As chief of staff, Sununu makes $125,000; his wife earns $57,500 as a fund raiser for the Republican Governors Association. They rent their condo to vacationers, earning as much as $50,000 a year; the couple has reported capital assets ranging from small savings accounts to a retirement fund valued as high as $250,000.
In addition to expenses incurred by rearing eight children, the Sununus reported paying up to $40,000 in tuitions in 1989 (a total that will drop next year, since a son just graduated from MIT). They pay more than $55,000 a year in mortgages and property taxes. In fact, the Sununus were late with 1990 property taxes in Virginia and New Hampshire; last February they paid up (including interest and penalties) after a Washington Post reporter inquired about the Virginia delinquency.
